Chapter 113 – The Heavenly Dragon Brigade's Exploits (2)

Namka let out a bloodcurdling scream and stumbled back instinctively. He glared with venomous eyes at the young man who had suddenly appeared before Won Se-hak.

“That’s enough. You’ve run rampant for too long.”

The young man who had severed Namka’s hand was none other than Kang Yu-jin.

Namka quickly pressed down on his acupressure points to stop the bleeding.

‘He may be young, but I can’t underestimate him.’

Yu-jin looked far too young, but he had pierced through the Heavenly Light Body Armor and taken his arm, so he couldn’t be ignored. Moreover, if there were others like Yu-jin, they would surely hinder the great cause. Namka decided to stake everything he had.

Having lost his right arm, the very life of a martial artist, he no longer had the right to call himself one anyway.

“Impressive for one so young. But this place is already finished.”

Yu-jin nodded at Namka’s words. However, their ideas of what was “finished” were different.

“Your comrades are the ones who are finished.”

At that moment.

“Kuaaaargh!”

Screams, their accents clearly different from those of the Central Plains, reached Namka’s ears. And the number of those screaming grew larger and larger.

“H-how!”

As the elite warriors of Potala Palace died in the blink of an eye, a crack appeared in Namka’s hitherto steadfast expression.

“That is none of your concern.”

Yu-jin replied with a smile, aiming the sword given to him by his clan at Namka.

“Kukuk… Now that I think about it, I did hear something. That the Martial Alliance created a strange unit to stop us. I thought it would be nothing special, just a gathering of brats, but to think someone like this existed…”

Finding Yu-jin’s smile truly unpleasant, Namka raised his remaining left arm.

The power would be halved, but he could still fire a palm strike with one hand. However, it took time to gather his energy, so Namka had tried to buy time by talking to Yu-jin.

“Think whatever you like.”

“Kukuk! I just need to kill you and then the others!”

Having finally gathered all his power, Namka unleashed a palm strike imbued with all his strength. Or rather, he tried to.

But the moment his shout ended, a starlit sword energy engulfed him, and he was completely obliterated.

“To think you’d try something so obvious.”

Yu-jin said this and then looked at Won Se-hak, who was staring at him with a dazed expression.

“W-who are you?”

Won Se-hak asked in a trembling voice. News of the Heavenly Dragon Brigade’s formation had not yet reached this place, so it was natural he didn’t know. Yu-jin looked at him and bowed politely.

“Kang Yu-jin, leader of the Heavenly Dragon Brigade. Under the orders of the Martial Alliance, I have come to save the martial world of Gansu. You can rest easy now.”

This was the moment the Heavenly Dragon Brigade made its first mark on the world.

* * *

Na Ye-jin swung her sword at the two Tibetan warriors approaching her. A moonlit sword energy radiated a beautiful light, bisecting their bodies.

But Na Ye-jin’s gaze wasn’t on the dead Tibetan warriors. Her eyes were fixed on Kang Yong-hoon.

This was because Yu-jin had ordered her to find out what kind of martial arts Kang Yong-hoon had learned.

No matter how many women Yu-jin toyed with, Kang Yong-hoon would never have dared to imagine he had reached out to Na Ye-jin.

‘What kind of martial art is that?’

Not all of the Tibetan warriors had learned the Heavenly Light Body Armor.

However, most had mastered powerful protective energy arts, yet with a light touch from Kang Yong-hoon, their protective energies were shattered. Moreover, the bodies of the warriors protected by the energy were crushed along with it. It could only be described as a martial art of supreme destructive power.

‘I heard that man trained in the sword, so what happened?’

Kang Yong-hoon no longer used a sword. No, he did use one, but only as a secondary weapon, primarily using his fists, hands, and palms.

She had heard about it from Yu-jin, but Na Ye-jin couldn’t believe a person’s martial arts could change so completely in just a few months.

‘No, that’s not it. I just have to assume all of Yu-jin’s blood relatives are abnormal. Their father is like that, so it’s ridiculous to expect the children to be any different.’

To her, who knew the truth of the True Dragon Sword Clan, Kang Yong-hoon’s transformation was not actually surprising. After all, wasn’t her soulmate, Yu-jin, the very embodiment of the absurd? By comparison, this was rather tame.

Considering it from that perspective, the fact that Kang Yong-hoon had reached the Transformation Realm wasn’t really that surprising either.

‘But that martial art is astonishing. To display such power without even having fully reached the Transformation Realm… I can see why Yu-jin told me to pay attention.’

Na Ye-jin thought this as she watched Kang Yong-hoon.

“Die!”

Kang Yong-hoon looked at the Tibetan warriors rushing toward him. The palm strikes they fired were certainly powerful, but they were not enough to pierce his Mad Dragon True Energy.

Kang Yong-hoon met their palm strikes head-on and threw a punch.

*KABOOOM!*

The warrior exploded as if hit by a cannonball.

Without even looking at the result he had created, Kang Yong-hoon immediately twisted his body and unleashed the Heaven-Sundering Claw at a Tibetan warrior charging from the opposite side, tearing a huge gash across the man’s chest. The protective energy surrounding their bodies was no more than paper before Kang Yong-hoon.

But Kang Yong-hoon did not look pleased. No, he couldn’t. Because he had seen Kang Yu-jin kill Namka, a master far stronger than these men, in just two exchanges.

‘Just when will I be able to surpass my brother?’

Surpassing Yu-jin was a truly difficult task.

* * *

Once the Heavenly Dragon Brigade intervened, the Tibetan warriors were dealt with in an instant. With one official Transformation Realm master, two unofficial ones (one of whom, Yu-jin, was actually at the Profound Realm), and thirty peak masters, the Heavenly Dragon Brigade was far too much for the Tibetan detachment to handle.

On top of that, there was even more hidden strength, so the deaths of the detachment members were all but predetermined.

However, in the short time before the Heavenly Dragon Brigade appeared, the damage suffered by the martial artists of Gansu was truly immense.

“To think that out of a thousand martial artists, three hundred lost their lives…”

In that brief moment, roughly thirty percent of their number had perished. Of course, most of them were less skilled, but even so, the prowess of the Tibetan warriors was tremendous.

The Tibetan warriors who fought against a thousand were only about fifty in number. To inflict such enormous damage with so few, where all the martial artists of Gansu had gathered, it was no exaggeration to call them monsters.

“I truly don’t know how to thank you.”

The leader of the Azure Dragon Sect, Won Se-hak, slightly bowed his head to Yu-jin, who was much younger than him, conveying his gratitude.

“Please raise your head. And why thank me for simply doing what had to be done?”

At Yu-jin’s words, Won Se-hak raised his head but didn’t dare to look around. He could feel the aura of death left behind by the many who had died.

“It is all my fault. I believed that if we gathered all our strength, we could defeat them… No, at the very least, I believed we could avoid being invaded. To suffer such losses at the hands of just fifty men, not even the entire Tibetan martial world… It is truly shameful and pathetic.”

Won Se-hak regretted his judgment, but this was something even Yu-jin could not console him about.

The Martial Alliance had clearly issued an order to join them, but they were the ones who had refused and stayed behind. And because of that, they had suffered a huge blow.

“It’s not too late. I urge you to join the Martial Alliance quickly.”

“The Heavenly Dragon Brigade, you said?”

“That is correct. It is a group formed with warriors handpicked by the Martial Alliance to stop the small detachments of Tibetan warriors, like the one today.”

Won Se-hak nodded at Yu-jin’s explanation. Only then did he understand how these men, so much younger than him, possessed martial prowess similar to or even greater than his own. The Martial Alliance had no intention of sitting back and taking a beating.

Yu-jin’s words continued.

“I know that sealing one’s sect gates and fleeing from the enemy is a humiliation worse than death. But the Tibetan martial world is said to be marching on the Martial Alliance’s headquarters. The Martial Alliance, which can be called the very soul and pride of all martial artists. Are you planning to hand that over to those foreign tribes?”

Handing over the Martial Alliance, steeped in history and tradition, to a foreign tribe was unthinkable.

Even if it meant abandoning one’s sect, one’s home.

Hearing Yu-jin’s words, Won Se-hak let out a sigh and then spoke.

“I will follow your advice and join the Martial Alliance. I cannot allow more lives to be lost meaninglessly because of my own stubbornness.”

Yu-jin smiled at Won Se-hak’s reply. This was the Heavenly Dragon Brigade’s second role.

To persuade those who were trying to defend their homes meaninglessly.

In the end, neither the Tibetan detachments nor the Martial Alliance’s Heavenly Dragon Brigade were the main forces. The most important thing was the single, fate-deciding battle. What the two groups were doing now was merely a light skirmish.

‘Even if it’s just a skirmish, I must ensure the momentum shifts in our favor.’

That was the role Yu-jin and the Heavenly Dragon Brigade had to play.

“It is late at night. Where do you plan to stay?”

Won Se-hak’s words suddenly brought the conversation back to a practical matter.

Of course, Yu-jin hadn’t thought about that. He had to save the martial artists of Gansu immediately; there was no time to consider such things.

“We can take care of the bodies. You are the heroes who saved us. We will prepare a place for you, so please, rest there.”

Refusing such kindness would be impolite, so Yu-jin accepted immediately. And so, the Heavenly Dragon Brigade came to stay at the Azure Dragon Sect.

And that was exactly what Yu-jin had wanted most.

* * *

It was late at night, and with so many dead, there was no grand welcoming party for the group. Moreover, everyone had been using their movement techniques without rest, and they had to fight immediately upon arrival, so they were already exhausted.

Thus, without exception, the warriors of the Heavenly Dragon Brigade went to sleep in the rooms provided by the Azure Dragon Sect.

However, Yu-jin, who possessed the stamina to fight at full strength for three days and nights without faltering, was still perfectly fine.

So fine, in fact, that he was engaging in the union of yin and yang with a woman.

“Haaahng! Huaaahng!”

Na Ye-jin let out a loud moan from the dizzying pleasure spreading from her flower petals, combined with the sensation of her jade pistil being ceaselessly rubbed.